AbstractGlobalising trends in recent years have resulted in more cross-national studies.Being a global organisation implies having a universal culture. For the past fewdecades there has been an important debate about convergence or divergence ofwork values. International organisations have tried to understand the diversevalue system of their multinational structure. The objectives of multinationalorganisations are to create a universal culture in the whole organisation and tointegrate multi-domestic operations with individuals who hold opposed workrelated values. There is evidence that national culture influences managementpractices, and multinational organisations need to adapt to the national cultures inwhich they operate in order to achieve high business performance. Research hasshown that a fit between national and organisational culture plays an importantrole in organisations that promote a climate of satisfied employees.This paper refers to the critical cultural and organisational factors that need to beconsidered when introducing a new or changing an existing Software QualityManagement (SQM) system. This work is based on our findings from researchcarried out on software quality assurance issues and Software ProcessImprovement (SPI). The research was focused on the significance of theorganisational context, including influences from the national culture in which theorganisation is situated. Findings showed statistically significant evidence that afit between the organisational and the national culture lead to higher employeesatisfaction and more trouble free problem solving. On the contrary a dichotomygenerates dissatisfaction, conflict, resistance, dysfunctional organisations andeventual failure of the quality management function.The emphasis of this paper is to describe the SQM-CODE model, which wasdeveloped as part of research work, and to present the on-line new SQM-CODEtool developed recently for self-assessment of the fit between organisational andnational culture. The tool investigates to what degree there is a fit between theorganisational and the national culture and consequently suggests a suitable SQMsystem to fit the organisational needs.

1. IntroductionIn today’s rapidly changing and highly competitive global environment the contextualboundaries of IS research and practices have changed to include the wider societal context.Management experiences difficulties when applying traditional management approaches,because of the increased complexity of global organisations and their dependency on peoplewith different underlying norms, values and beliefs. Researchers call for caution inmanaging global organisations or global business collaborations, such as off-shoreoutsourcing [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. They argue that behavioural traits of diverse work groups cancontribute to dysfunctional organisations. Cultural sensitivity has become a core issue.In the eSourcing Capability Maturity Model for Service Providers - eSCM-SP [6, 7, 8, 9],which has many similarities with other capability models, such as Capability MaturityModel (CMM), Botstrap and Spice (ISO-15504), it is argued that it is important to identifycultural attributes that impact on service and implementation actions in order to support theclose coordination necessary to meet client requirements. The model states that “multi-national and organisational differences between the client and the service provider, andcultural differences within the provider may impact the quality of interactions and theoverall quality of the sourcing relationships” [8]. It is mentioned that important culturalfactors need to be identified and appropriate action to be taken in order to achieve a culturalfit between the service provider and the client/contractor. However, it is not mentionedwhich cultural factors are important, how to identify them or what kind of appropriate actionshould be taken.Nevertheless, for the first time it is explicitly mentioned in a capability model that a culturalfit between two parts may impact on the quality of interactions. This is an important step inrecognition of the importance of a cultural fit between factors from the external environment(national culture) and the internal organisational environment (organisation). Other researchhas tried to identify such cultural factors including national factors that influence theeffectiveness of Software Process Improvement (SPI) [10, 11, 12].2. The Fit between National and Organisational CultureSiakas (2002) found that a fit between national and organisational culture plays anextremely important role in all kinds of organisations that promote a climate of satisfiedemployees and decreased misunderstandings and conflicts due to cross-cultural issues. Shealso found and statistically proved that a cultural fit between national and organisationalculture in global organisations is significant for obtaining commitment and avoidingresistance when introducing change in the organisations such as introducing or changing aSoftware Quality Management system. A model, called SQM-CODE, Software QualityManagement– Cultural and Organisational Diversity Evaluation was developed as a resultof her research to assess the organisational and the national culture in order to identify thecultural fit [11]. The model aims to increase cultural awareness and to provide stimulus forimprovement. It can be used as a tool for assessing the cultural fit between a serviceprovider and a contractor in an outsourcing business partnership or it can be used in anyglobal organisation wanting to expand to a new geographical area and/or in virtualorganisations for assessing teams working across organisational boundaries. The aims ofthe SQM-CODE model are to help these organisations in developing cultural sensitivity andto predict a suitable Software Quality Management system in the area of interest.

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The SQM-CODE tool is an on-line self-assessment tool which makes a quick assessment. Afull SQM-CODE assessment includes an in-depth analysis aiming to identify criticalcultural factors and to propose appropriate action in order to achieve a cultural fit. Theprocess is much bigger including quantitative and qualitative research undertaken by anassessment team. The results and deliverables will allow for the identification of a numberof cultural factors in the assessed organisation that have a bearing on the successfuladoption and implementation of a Software Quality Management system. The outcome ofSQM-CODE will be recommendations to the organisation about what cultural andorganisational factors to take into consideration, especially related to Software QualityManagement issues. For organisations, which do not have a Software Quality Managementsystem in place, a suitable Software Quality Management system will be recommended.For all organisations whether they have an existing Software Quality Management systemor not, recommendations and guidelines about possible reorganisation of processes andresponsibilities will be proposed.This paper describes shortly the SQM-CODE model and the SQM-CODE tool, a self-assessment tool, which can be used by any organisation that wants a fast response regardingthe basic underlying cultural fit or dichotomy between organisational and national culture3. SQM-CODEThe main objective of the research study that lead to the development of the SQM-CODE(software quality management: Cultural and Organisational Diversity Evaluation) modelwas to add to the knowledge of what factors influence successful Software QualityManagement systems [11, 12]. The research in particular examined those factors, whichform a cultural and organisational perspective. The research question that the studyaddressed was to what extent cultural factors influence the successful adoption andimplementation of a Software Quality Management system. The analysis considered factorsfrom both national and organisational areas. The existence of quality oriented managementprocedures (similar to the procedures identified in Capability Models), was investigatedempirically, together with the awareness of quality issues amongst the workforce.The research method used was a contemporary comparative multimethod also calledtriangulation using both quantitative (307 questionnaires) and qualitative investigation (87interviews) in organisations developing software in Denmark, Finland, Greece and the UK.Consequently, and by its very nature the investigation utilised the strengths of cross-nationalcomparative studies.The SQM-CODE model assesses the cultural fit between national culture and organisationalculture. The SQM-CODE model comprises two sub-models, namely the C.HI.D.DI.Typology and the Authoritarian-Participative model.The C.HI.D.DI typology, which is based on Hofstede' s Power Distance and UncertaintyAvoidance dimensions, classifies organisations into four dimensions namely Clan,HIerarchical, Democratic and Disciplined. This classification defines the national culture.Simultaneously a suitable Software Quality Management system is proposed [13].

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The Authoritarian-Participative sub-model defines the organisational culture consideringorganisational characteristics such as organisational structure, degree of formalisation,management style, leader’s role, handling of rules and degree of control.The final two-axed values obtained from both assessments show the cultural fit. The closerthe values are the better the fit. The values can be plotted into the four quadrants of theC.HI.D.DI typology for graphical representation. The self-assessment of the SQM-CODEwill give a fast response regarding the basic underlying cultural fit or dichotomy betweenorganisational and national culture.The findings from a field-study (11, 14) showed statistically significant evidence that ifthere is a fit between the organisational and the national culture, then there is a higheremployee satisfaction and problems are solved more smoothly. A dichotomy is highly likelyto generate dissatisfaction, conflict and ultimate failure.3. The SQM-CODE On-Line Tool

The SQM-CODE On-Line tool was developed as a collaborative research project betweenthe department of Informatics at the Alexander Technological Educational Institution,Greece and Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University ofJyväskylä, Finland.

3.1 Tool overview

SQM-CODE On-Line tool is a Java based web application that runs on top of an applicationserver. Organisations can measure their current organisational culture by using the tool. Adefault questionnaire (including questions and key rations) of the tool is implemented tofollow SQM-CODE model.

3.2 How the tool works

The tool has two operational modes: one for administration purposes and one forresponding to questionnaires. Administrator must define Questionnaire.dir system propertyunder application server’s system properties. The Questionnaire.dir property declares a usedworking path for the questionnaire. After defining the working path, the administratorinitialises the questionnaire in administrator mode. In the initialisation phase theadministrator copies a default questions file (Questionnaire.xml) and a default XMLschema file (Questionnaire.xsd) to the working directory. In addition he/she definesorganisations units (in administration page of the tool) that are allowed to respond to thequestionnaire. The tool generates an identifier for each organisation unit. This identifier isneeded for logging in to the questionnaire as an organisation and for mapping certain users’answers to the organisation. This means that several employees in the organisation canreply to the questionnaire and the data can be analysed with regard to the organisation. Inthe administrator page it is also possible to browse answers by each user and the results(key rations) of the each organisation unit. A raw questions data can also be exported inComma Separated Value (CSV) format.

Answering to the questionnaire is straight forward. The user connects to the server using aweb browser and in a front page of the tool he / she is advised to fill in his / her meta data

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(including demographic data and the organisation identifier provided by the administrator)or login (as an organisation or administrator). After filling in the meta data the user isforwarded to the cultural part of the questionnaire. In this part each question is showed oneby one. After the last question the user is forwarded to the front page of the tool.

In case of the default questionnaire is not used, the administrator can define a set of newquestions in XML format and save the set over the existing Questionnaire.xml file. This isan important quality characteristic of the application as it allows for online improvement ofthe questionnaire. The Questionnaire.xml file must follow the default XML schema format(Figure 1) or some of its extensions, because of a used schema validation. It is possible todefine open, multiple choice and scale based questions by using the default schema. If thereare requirements for key rations, a meta information should be included for the eachquestion in the Questionnaire.xml file.

Figure 1: Questionnaire.xsd

The structure of the XML schema above is presented using Altova XML-spy’s [15]notation. A questions root element of a document must contain one to infinite amount ofquestion elements. Every question has a type element that indicates certain type of question.Optional elements of schema are market as dotted. The schema extensions (e.g. a picturequestion) can be done with the optional elements.

3.3 Technology and tools in a nutshell

We chose to use Java as programming language for our tool / application implementationbecause of its popularity and open source tool / technology support. Our on-line assessmenttool is Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application that is implemented using open sourceJava tools and technologies provided by JBoss [16]. The application runs on the top ofJBoss 4.0.3 application server [17] and it is developed using JBoss SEAM [18], which is anbeta application framework for Java EE 5. SEAM unifies the component models of JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (EJB 3.0) [19]. JSF is a User Interface(UI) framework for Java web applications [20] and the EJB 3.0 is an extension for the

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enterprise JavaBeans that brings simplifications and new functionality to the earlier EJBApplication Programming Interfaces (API) [21].

Methods and irrelevant attributes are not presented above. Every class in the picture is EJB3.0 entity bean.

4.4 The developer point of view

Our implementation is about 4500 lines of Java classes and about 500 lines of XML baseduser interfaces. One requirement for application was to be flexible. To achieve thisrequirement the question engine was implemented so that it is not indented only forgenerating questions for SQM-CODE assessments. The engine can be easily configuredwith XML files to generate all kinds of questionaries with different semantics and keyrations. Even the addition of a new question type is quite straightforward. The newQuestion types must be derived from abstract Question class and derived class types mustbe added to a QuestionTypes.properties file which is used for mapping the schema Typeelement string to the entity bean class. Initialization of the questions follows Abstract

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Factory design pattern [28] and the tool does not know the actual classes of the derivedquestions.

From the developer’s point of view, EJB 3.0 reaches its aims clearly by simplifying thedevelopment, facilitating test driven development, and focusing on writing POJOs ratherthan on complex EJB APIs. The most difficult thing that we met was a little bit buggy codeand lack of full documentation. Certainly this is almost always the case when evaluating ortesting beta implementations. Whereas the amount of writing code is reduced using thesetechnologies, time has to be spent with understanding the whole set of documentation,examples and frameworks. J2EE or Java EE 5 is a wide topic to cover. Only EJB 3.0 coredocumentation [21] is more than 550 pages. However, we believe that enterprise Java isgoing for the moment in a right direction with EJB 3.0.